Escaping the pipe (|) character in java

Question

Hi,
I am trying to run the following command in java
ps -ef -o pid,args | grep init | grep -v grep
The code is
       try {
                Runtime rt = Runtime.getRuntime();
                Process pr = rt.exec("ps -ef -o pid,args \\| grep init \\| grep -v grep ");
                BufferedReader input = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(pr.getInputStream()));
                String line=null;
                while((line=input.readLine()) != null) {
                    System.out.println(line);
                int exitVal = pr.waitFor();
                System.out.println("Exited with error code "+exitVal);*/
            } catch(Exception e) {
                System.out.println(e.toString());
                e.printStackTrace();
            }I am not able to run this command in Java. And, I guess the problem lies in escaping the pipe symbol. I am not sure how to do that. Can anyone please help me on that?
Thanks,
Juggie

Answer 1

The problem is not escaping; it's that the pipe character is interpreted by the shell. You should be passing that command line to the shell, e.g. "sh ps -ef -o pid,args | grep ..."